[Denver Post archive]
Mattie Silks led a wild, lucrative life in Denver’s early days by profiting off the wages of other women’s prostitution and horse racing.

Mattie Silks left her name big and bold in the pioneer history of Colorado, but on a chilly Wednesday morning last week only frost lingered in the shadow of her lonesome, low headstone among the handsome monuments of family pride. The name on the marker says simply “Martha A. Ready, Died January 7, 1929,” as if that’s all she cared for anyone to know.

The staff at Fairmount Cemetery know her well. “We get lots of requests for that one,” said Ronda Gruel-Hott, the cemetery office manager.

A hundred years ago Mattie Silks was the famous queen of Denver’s debauchery, the operator of bordellos along Market Street, when the market was flesh that was rented by the hour with the gold of miners and the pay of cowboys. So accomplished was she as a madam, the style of boot she might have worn bears her name.

When she died at 83 years old, she was married to Handsome Jack Ready, but cemetery records show Martha, or Mattie, is buried next to the unmarked grave of Cortese D. Thomson, the gambler and con man who constantly did her wrong.